Xiaomi Mi 5 To Ship With Helio X20 Due To Qualcomm Royalties?

Xiaomi Mi 5 is expected to be announced before the end of this year. The company’s upcoming flagship was supposed to be released back in July, but for some reason Xiaomi decided to wait this long. Rumors were saying that the company is waiting for the Snapdragon 820 to become available, and today’s Geekbench listing more or less confirmed that. Well, a new report has popped up in China, and according to it, the Xiaomi Mi 5 might not sport Qualcomm’s Snapdragon SoC after all, read on.

According to this report, Xiaomi Mi 5 might end up shipping with MediaTeks Helio X20 deca-core SoC. Why? Well, it seems like there are some disputes between Xiaomi and Qualcomm regarding royalty fees. The report states that Xiaomi thinks Qualcomm royalties are too high, and if the company decided to pay them, that would increase the cost of their smartphones, which is definitely something Xiaomi does not want to do. This is actually quite interesting considering previous rumors were stating that Mi 5 was supposed to launch equipped with the Snapdragon 810, but Xiaomi decided not to do that because of Snapdragon 810’s heating issues. So, which SoC will ship inside the Mi 5? Well, who knows, we’ll have to wait and see, but this smartphone is expected to be announced before the end of the year, no matter which SoC Xiaomi ends up opting for.

Now, according to the leaked Geekbench specs, the Xiaomi Mi 5 will not only be powered by the Snapdragon 820, but will also sport 3GB of RAM and Android 6.0 marshmallow out of the box. Some previous rumors were suggesting that the device will ship with a 5.2-5.5” display, 4GB of RAM and a fingerprint scanner. In fact, a rumor appeared earlier today saying that the Mi 5 will sport a front-facing fingerprint scanner. The device will almost certainly going to be made out of metal, and a 21-megapixel rear-facing shooter has also been mentioned in rumors. Xiaomi’s MIUI Android-based skin will be available on top of Google’s operating system, no matter which version Xiaomi ends up releasing. That is more or less it, all we can do at this point is sit and wait for more information, stay tuned.